Wellcome Trust director Sir Jeremy Farrar told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show the UK was likely to be “one of the worst, if not the worst affected country in Europe”.

Andrew Marr Show http://www.bbc.co.uk

Currently Italy has the highest number of deaths of any European country – with more than 19,000 deaths – followed by Spain, France and the UK, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

Germany has kept deaths below 3,000 so far.

Sir Jeremy, a member of the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show the “remarkable” scale of testing in Germany had been key to keeping the number of hospital admissions for coronavirus lower than in the UK.

Sir Jeremy said testing allowed countries to isolate people with Covid-19, preventing them from transmitting the virus to others, as well as buying time for hospitals to prepare.

“Undoubtedly there are lessons to learn from that,” he added.

The UK government has said it wants to do 100,000 coronavirus tests a day by the end of April but has faced criticism for not increasing the number more quickly.

Sir Jeremy said a second or third wave of the virus “was probably inevitable” and treatment and a vaccine was “our only true exit strategy”.

He said a vaccine could be available by autumn but it would take longer to ramp up manufacturing to the scale required to vaccinate many millions of people.

“I would hope we would get [that] done in 12 months but that is in itself an unprecedented ambition,” he said.

Asked whether he agreed with Sir Jeremy’s analysis of the UK’s death rate, Business Secretary Alok Sharma said: “Different countries are at different stages of this cycle.”

“What we have done with the advice that we have now set out to people, to stay at home, is precisely because we want to make sure that we have a flattening of the curve, that infection rates aren’t going up, and ultimately people’s lives are being saved,” he told the programme.

“We are starting to see these measures work,” he added, but said it was too early for them to be lifted yet.

Prof Keith Neal, emeritus professor in the epidemiology of infectious diseases at the University of Nottingham, said it was likely the UK would have one of the largest numbers of coronavirus deaths because it had the second largest population in Western Europe after Germany.

“The important figure is the death rate per million and not the total number of deaths. On this count Belgium seems to be heading for a serious problem like Italy and Spain,” he said.

Covid-19 has found an ally in its pursuit of infecting as many people as possible in the shortest space of time — the older white man.  (Obvious – Owl)

“It won’t be easy to rein in the older white man without some form of martial law. The government has deployed every public relations trick in the book. There has been a carpet bombing of emails, letters, press briefings, adverts and headlines all delivering ever more apocalyptic warnings to the public. The doom cupboard is almost bare.” 

Richard Stokoe lectures at the University of South Wales on planning for disasters and civil contingencies and on strategic leadership www.huffingtonpost.co.uk 

Boris Johnson and his dad, Mike ‘Sports Direct’ Ashley, Matt Hancock, Neil and Stephen Kinnock, Tim ‘Wetherspoons’ Martin, Donald Trump, Michael ‘Ryanair’ O’Leary and Robert ‘I drove to visit my parents’ Jenrick. High-profile individuals that at first glance have very little in common. Yet they have all shown public disregard for either the virility of the virus or the advice to stay at home, self-isolate and socially distance.

They are not alone. A recent UK wide poll by JL Partners found that around 3.6 million people are still ignoring social distancing advice, 2.6 million aren’t washing their hands and 3.1 million people are still content to hug or shake hands.

Politicians, like Michael Gove  have lazily pointed to millennials being the culprits. They cite the photos of groups of young people shopping in markets or lounging in parks as evidence that, true to form with rebellious youth, it is they that are breaking the rules and putting lives at risk. 

This is simply wrong. The group that will disobey warnings in a crisis far more than any other is older white men. It is known as the ’White Male Effect’.  

Not all older white men expose themselves to greater unnecessary risk by failing to trust or act on warnings, and not all women or young people will play ball either. We all remember ‘Chris’, the infamous BBC Radio Solent caller who proclaimed she was happy to risk walking on the beach in return for her life. But a far higher proportion of older white men will expose themselves to risk than any other group, including millennials.   

Research repeatedly demonstrates that white men, especially older ones, consistently ignore warnings. They have a greater distrust of officialdom and experts, believe more in their own instincts to be right over anyone else’s and, have a higher tendency to not do what they are told even if it is for their own good or the good of others. They believe in their own invincibility and immortality.

In tornadoes, older white men, compared to anyone else, are less likely to take shelter. In floods they are far more likely to refuse to leave the area. During Covid-19, it means many won’t stay home to save lives. 

This White Male Effect will also almost certainly have played a part in how slowly the UK and the US responded to the emerging pandemic. Both the Johnson and Trump administrations have also turned to older white male experts for how to manage this crisis — the notable exceptions being Jenny Harries and Yvonne Doyle.

This White Male Effect is caused primarily by the education system and society as a whole, which encourages white men to believe in their own superiority. 

The longer a white man lives in Western society, the longer he is exposed to subtle influences that tell him he knows best. He has a higher opinion of himself, a determination to assert dominance over others and a fear of other groups, such as younger people or women, undermining his authority. 

The ongoing challenge for government is to keep older white men on their side as social distancing measures drag on. 

The lockdown appears to be working in terms of ‘flattening the curve’. For the current measures to continue to be successful it takes the vast majority to obey. This need to continue to alter our behaviour will wear thin on many of those older white men who originally conformed. 

Once the initial news blitz declines, and he hasn’t experienced Covid-19 for himself, older white man will think the government has cried wolf. He will believe it is overhyped and will become desensitised to the crisis far quicker than anyone else. The latest uptick in traffic on the roads shows that he probably already is.

It won’t be easy to rein in the older white man without some form of martial law. The government has deployed every public relations trick in the book. There has been a carpet bombing of emails, letters, press briefings, adverts and headlines all delivering ever more apocalyptic warnings to the public. The doom cupboard is almost bare.

The government has commandeered some of the best and most astute older white male minds to tackle the impact of coronavirus. Now they must reach out to the brightest in disaster management, behavioural economics, nudge theory, marketing and public relations, and ask them to solve the White Male Effect conundrum before it is too late. 

This effort must include women, ethnic minorities and younger people rather than another pale male cohort — otherwise the same mistakes will be repeated and more lives will be lost.   

“Sir Ian Boyd, the chief scientific adviser to Defra between 2012 and 2019 , told the Guardian it was difficult to get ministers to spend money on preparing for high-impact, low-frequency events like pandemics. “Governments over the years have buried their heads, and it is harder to have those conversations with people who have a small-government view of the world,” he said.”

Felicity Lawrence  www.theguardian.com

UK government stockpiles containing protective equipment for healthcare workers in the event of a pandemic fell in value by almost 40% over the past six years, the Guardian has found.

Analysis of official financial data suggests £325m was wiped off the value of the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) emergency stockpile, reducing it from £831m in 2013 under the Conservative-led coalition government to £506m by March last year.

The finding is likely to raise further questions for the health secretary, Matt Hancock, who faced criticism over the weekend after urging healthcare workers not to “overuse” personal protective equipment (PPE).

The revelation raises questions about why the value depreciated so quickly and how the fall related to stock-levels.

According to official figures at least 19 UK healthcare workers had died after contracting coronavirus. Frontline medical staff have complained of PPE shortages, which they say are putting lives at risk.

Last week, it emerged that three nurses who had been wearing bin bags due to a lack of PPE had tested positive for coronavirus. It was also confirmed that a consultant at a hospital in east London died from the virus weeks after making a plea to the prime minister for more PPE for NHS staff.

Hospitals have turned to schools for donations of science goggles amid shortages of eye protection, while some NHS staff have made improvised masks out of snorkels and bought kit from hardware stores.

The widespread shortages of equipment, which Hancock has blamed on problems with the distribution system, has raised questions about the UK’s levels of preparedness for a pandemic of this kind.

Accounts suggest funding for “stockpiled goods” that are “held for use in national emergencies” was increased between 2008 and 2011, when pandemic preparedness was identified as a national priority for the NHS. But since 2013 the value of the stockpile has fallen.

The findings are likely to renew questions about whether government stockpiles held sufficient quantities of personal protective equipment (PPE) before the Covid-19 pandemic and whether emergency preparations were affected by almost a decade of cuts and reduced public investment.

On Sunday, it was revealed that one in three UK surgeons say they do not have access to enough masks, gowns and other clothing to keep them safe.

Contacted by the Guardian, DHSC declined to provide a breakdown of its emergency stockpile’s contents, which will also include medicines such as antivirals and flu vaccines. However, NHS plans drawn up in 2017 state that “the bulk of” the pandemic stockpiles available to the health service consisted of PPE, including FFP3 respirator masks, gloves and aprons.

The stockpiled goods have shelf lives and so require frequent replenishment. According to the DHSC’s financial accounts, between 2011 and 2019 depletions of the emergency stockpile significantly outstripped the amount spent on adding new supplies to the reserves.

A spokesman for DHSC said the value of the emergency stockpile “does not relate to the volume of its contents”, adding that “through responsible procurement” officials had been “successful in maintaining its stock”.

The department refused to answer the Guardian’s questions about the volume of the stockpile in 2019 compared with 2011.

The spokesman said the UK was “one of the most prepared countries in the world for pandemics” and the government “continues to work around the clock to give the NHS and the wider social care sector the equipment and support they need”.

The reduction in the stockpile’s value occurred at a time the government considered that a pandemic represented the most serious emergency threat likely to face the UK. The government has in recent years been concerned about the rapid worldwide spread of a novel virus to which people have no immunity.

Since 2007, a series of studies and exercises to prepare the UK for an event of this kind identified the availability of PPE for health and social care workers as a cornerstone to a national response, essential to reducing transmission of a new virus.

Dr Lindsey Davies, a former national director of pandemic influenza preparedness, told the Guardian that PPE shortages were modelled as far back as 2007, during a large cross-government pandemic simulation codenamed Exercise Winter Willow. “It was a live issue at the time,” she said.

Davies explained that following the 2007 exercise “there was an increased momentum after that to develop a business case for stockpiling, and a lot of discussion about the right amounts and how far it was right to have a nationally funded stockpile”.

In the wake of the Winter Willow exercise, and with the emergence of the swine flu pandemic two years later, the Department of Health, as it was then known, embarked on a procurement programme aimed at boosting stockpiles of medicines and PPE, according to departmental accounts and performance reports. By the end of the 2010-11 financial year, the value of the department’s stockpile stood at £830m, an 80% increase from 2008-09.

In 2016, after years of delays, the government staged another nationwide pandemic drill, codenamed Exercise Cygnus. The exercise, which simulated a deadly outbreak of so-called “swan flu”, is believed to have shown that in the event of a deadly pandemic the NHS would be overwhelmed by a shortage of critical care beds and vital equipment.

The government is refusing to release the official conclusions from Exercise Cygnus, which have never been made public, but there are indications in reports by local authorities who participated in the exercise that PPE supplies were an area of concern.

It is not clear whether at a national level the conclusions included recommendations about emergency stockpile funding. But DHSC accounts show that in the three years after the 2016 drill, the value of the stockpile fell by more than £200m.

Sir Ian Boyd, the chief scientific adviser to Defra between 2012 and 2019 , told the Guardian it was difficult to get ministers to spend money on preparing for high-impact, low-frequency events like pandemics. “Governments over the years have buried their heads, and it is harder to have those conversations with people who have a small-government view of the world,” he said.

This year, as the government began to consider the threat posed by the novel coronavirus outbreak in China to the UK, PPE soon found its way on to the agenda of meetings between officials and high-level scientific and clinical advisers.

Minutes of meetings suggest that as early as January the government was involved in discussions with advisers about when emergency PPE stockpiles would need to be released.

During a meeting on 28 January of the government’s new and emerging respiratory virus threats group (Nervtag), attended by senior officials including England’s chief medical officer, Chris Whitty, it was noted that if sustained community transmission of the novel virus in the UK was established, the numbers of infected patients in hospitals would rise. “This would entail deployment and use of the UK’s pandemic influenza PPE stockpiles,” a minute of the meeting states.

According to minutes from early February, Nervtag went on to make a series of recommendations to the government’s emergency committee Cobra about what PPE would be required for different settings and different groups of workers. A month later, in early March, advisers discussed a potential scenario where stocks of respirator masks ran out.

Additional reporting by Rob Evans

We spend just over 2% of gdp on defence to protect our nation against  traditional threats—invasions, terrorist attacks, something created by an enemy (about £50bn/year) but nothing to provide a surge capacity to deal with a future epidemic.

Yet a pandemic was recognised in 2010 as one of the highest risks we face. In fact, at the time, our first ever national security adviser, Peter Ricketts, placed the risk of a pandemic higher and greater than a military invasion.

Austerity, austerity – no money. “Penny wise, pound foolish?”  Osborne economics – Owl

Steve Bloomfield  www.prospectmagazine.co.uk

“The risk of human pandemic disease remains one of the highest we face,” stated the UK government’s 2010 national security strategy. The “possible impacts of a future pandemic,” it continued, “could be that up to one half of the UK population becomes infected, resulting in between 50,000 and 750,000 deaths in the UK, with corresponding disruption to everyday life.”

According to the government’s national risk register, published at the same time, a pandemic would lead to “normal life… likely fac[ing] wide social and economic disruption; significant threats to the continuity of essential services; lower production levels; shortages; and distribution difficulties. Individual organisations may suffer from the pandemic’s impact on staff absenteeism therefore reducing the services available.”

In short, we knew this would happen. Ten years ago, the government’s new national security council, led by its first ever national security adviser, Peter Ricketts, placed the risk of a pandemic higher and greater than a military invasion. Why, then, were we not prepared?

“We put it up in lights,” recalled Ricketts, when I spoke to him over the phone last week. “But it never got the resourcing because there was always an immediate crisis.” And yet, the 2010 strategy was written in the wake of the swine flu pandemic. “That should have been a wake-up call,” said Ricketts. “I don’t know why more wasn’t done. There was always a higher priority than buying more ventilators.”

His successor, Mark Lyall Grant, who authored the follow-up strategy in 2015 that also categorised a pandemic as a “tier one” risk, was even blunter, questioning the role of other government departments. “Getting the Treasury to allocate money for contingencies is extremely difficult,” he told me. Furthermore, “I don’t recall the Department of Health (DoH) arguing that they needed more money to meet this risk.”

One reason the Treasury and the DoH might have been reluctant to spend any extra money on dealing with the possibility of a pandemic is because the government repeatedly insisted there was no extra money for anything. The UK’s realisation that pandemics were a major risk coincided with the longest period of austerity since the Second World War.

“Our ability to meet these current and future threats depends crucially on tackling the budget deficit,” wrote David Cameron and Nick Clegg in the foreword to the 2010 national security strategy. “An economic deficit is also a security deficit.” On budgets, “tough choices” would need to be made, they wrote.

Those choices were still being made seven years later. Just three months after Theresa May dismissed a nurse’s appeal for a pay rise by arguing there was “no magic money tree,” the government published a new national risk register. It noted that the likelihood of “emerging infectious disease” had increased in the two years since the last national security strategy.

Instead of promising more money, the minister for resilience and efficiency, Caroline Nokes, suggested that the UK’s “long experience” with resilience would be enough. “Call it what you will, but whether through the fabled ‘stiff upper lip,’ ‘Blitz spirit’ or just a stubborn determination, our resilience can be seen at the forefront of our handling of emergencies.”

It wasn’t just a lack of money, though. In the 2015 national security strategy—“a much better document” than 2010, Lyall Grant claims—89 specific commitments were made to ensure that every part of the strategy was implemented. A sub-committee was set-up to check on their progress and report back to parliament.

As we were talking by phone, Lyall Grant flicked through the 89 commitments, searching for the ones related to a pandemic. “Cyber, dark web, illegal firearms, biosecurity… I don’t see any specific commitment at that time for any specific contingency plan.” This, he accepts, was an error. “Had there been a specific commitment on the strategy that would have put more spotlight on it at different levels rather than leaving it to the Department of Health.”

It is easy to point at the various government documents—national security strategies, risk registers, strategic defence and security reviews—and find the evidence that proves that we knew this was going to happen. But claiming something is a priority doesn’t really matter if no one believes it really is. And that was the problem. For Whitehall, the risk of a pandemic was too obscure, too hard to imagine. Even when the document was there, in black and white, stating the threat as clearly and as boldly as possible.

Our entire national security infrastructure is set up to prevent traditional threats—invasions, terrorist attacks, something created by an enemy. A virus operates in a different manner. A virus does not hold press conferences threatening death and destruction or release grainy propaganda videos. A virus does not carry out a nuclear weapons test or dismantle democracy. Until it exists, a virus will not be mentioned in ambassadorial cables, or raised by the security services in daily briefings, or be the focus of an in-depth profile in a national newspaper.

When the public inquiry takes place, these documents will be pored over. Questions will be asked about why they weren’t acted upon. But it’s not as simple to argue this was a failure of government; it was also a failure of imagination.

A cabinet minister accused of breaching the lockdown faces fresh questions over his housing portfolio as he has charged taxpayers more than £100,000 for a constituency home that he appears to use only rarely.

Gabriel Pogrund, Tim Shipman and Tom Calver  www.thetimes.co.uk 

Robert Jenrick, the housing, communities and local government secretary, was accused of ignoring government advice last week after leaving his £2.5m London house during the lockdown and moving to a country home that he owns in Herefordshire.

Lockdown rules say families should not travel to second homes. Matt Hancock, the health secretary, said such journeys were not “necessary”.

A spokesman for Jenrick said the minister considered the £1.1m, 17th-century grade I listed country house near Leominster to be his family home — and that his wife and children moved there before the lockdown. However, Jenrick’s official entry on the Conservative Party website says he and his family “live in Southwell near Newark [his constituency], and in London”. Neighbours said he is rarely at the Herefordshire property and builders are a “regular fixture” there. One described the claim that it was his family home as “codswallop”.

MPs’ anti-sleaze guidance says they do not need to declare ownership of “any land or property which is used wholly for their own personal residential purposes, or those of their spouse, partner or dependent children”. Yet Jenrick has chosen to declare the Herefordshire home since 2015. Over the same period, Jenrick, 38, privately educated and married to a corporate lawyer, has charged the taxpayer more than £100,000 in rent and council tax for his constituency home.

Travel expenses suggest that Jenrick rarely spends an entire weekend at the property, which is in one of the top council tax brackets. On five occasions between 2018 and 2019, he drove to the constituency and back on the same day.

A government minister said last night: “It’s a bit odd to make the taxpayer fund your constituency home when you’ve got all that money. It doesn’t look good.”

Steve Reed, Labour’s shadow communities secretary, urged Jenrick to resign, saying he was only still in his post because “there’s no prime minister available to sack him”.

A spokesman for Jenrick did not respond to further requests for comment.

The Tory Cabinet Minister accused of flouting virus lockdown rules is now under fire for claiming he understands what it is like to be ‘cooped up’. 

Brendan Carlin  www.dailymail.co.uk

Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick is under increasing pressure to quit for allegedly defying a ban on travelling to second homes by going 150 miles from London to his mansion in Herefordshire. 

But last night, Mr Jenrick – who insists the country manor house is his main family home – faced new claims of trying to ‘con’ the public over his domestic arrangements. 

Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick is under increasing pressure to quit for allegedly defying a ban on travelling to second homes by going 150 miles from London to his mansion in Herefordshire

The Minister, who with wife Michal Berkner has three small children, told the BBC last week that he understood the plight of families crammed into small flats during the lockdown and the need to keep local parks open. 

He said: ‘I am very aware of how difficult this is already. ‘I am a father of young children. I know what it’s like to have a family cooped up…’ 

But Tory MPs reacted in fury last night to the comments. 

One backbencher said: ‘Jenrick’s position was already pretty dire, to be honest. 

‘But to go on the radio and claim you understand what it’s like to be cooped up is an insult to my constituents who are enduring the lockdown in small flats.

But last night, Mr Jenrick – who insists the country manor house is his main family home – faced new claims of trying to ‘con’ the public over his domestic arrangements

‘Whether his family were already in that country pile of his or still in his London home, he can’t possibly say that. ‘He really has to go.’ 

Another Tory MP said: ‘This really is stretching the definition of cooped up to farcical levels.’ 

In another blow yesterday, one of Mr Jenrick’s neighbours in Herefordshire said the idea that the country manor was his main home was ‘codswallop’. 

Mr Jenrick could not be reached for comment last night.